where are acid-fast bacteria usually found?

Answer 1

Some of the more medically important acid-fast bacteria are Corynebacteria, Mycobacteria and Nocardia and are generally found in the soil and water, although Corynebacterium can be found in many places, including nasal passages of humans and on the skin. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is thought to have originated as a soil bacterium which infected cows and later made the jump to humans. Humans are now the main reservoir for Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Mycobacteria tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae are two of the more famous pathogenic acid-fast bacteria causing tuberculosis and leprosy, respectively.

Corynebacterium diptheriae is the causative agent for Diptheria; humans are the only known reservoir for Corynebacterium diptheriae.

Answer 2

This site says, "Only a few types of bacteria are acid-fast, notably members of the Corynebacterineae. Most are rod-shaped, termed acid-fast bacilli (AFB), but other forms also occur. Medically the most important AFB is Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Other species of Mycobacterium and genera like Nocardia and Corynebacterium are also notable examples."

http://www.answers.com/topic/acid-fast-bacillus?cat=health

Corynebacterineae is a group that includes tuberculosis and leprosy. Of course, Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the TB-causing organism and so it can be found in the lungs.

Following the link on the website, you find this about Nocardia: "Nocardia are found worldwide in soil that is rich with organic matter. Most Nocardia infections are acquired by inhalation of the bacteria or through traumatic introduction."

There's also the link to info about Corynebacterium which is a bit too long to paste here. Follow the link in the article listed above.

Answer 3

For the best answers, search on this site https://shorturl.im/awGc1

The term “acid fast” refers to a staining technique. Bacteria cause infections. Antibiotics kill bacteria (usually), but some bacteria are easily killed by some antibiotics, killed less well by other antibiotics, and not killed at all by still other antibiotics. You could try to find the most effective antibiotic by trial and error (i.e., if the first antibiotic you try doesn’t work, maybe the second, fifth or twentieth antibiotic you try will work), but that takes time, and before you find an effective antibiotic, the patient might die. It is much better to determine exactly which species or strain of bacteria you are dealing before you try to choose a specific antibiotic to kill it, so you take a sample of the infection and send it off to a lab for identification. In the lab, technicians will grow the bacteria out on Petrie dishes and will subject it to a number of standard tests to try to identify it. There are many standard tests. Different species of bacteria are different in many ways. One difference is in the composition of their cell walls (e.g., the cell walls of tuberculosis bacteria contain mycolic acid) and that difference causes them to react differently to stains. Just as some fabrics, like cotton, might absorb a particular dye more easily than some other fabrics, like nylon; and, just as some fabrics might be easier to bleach than some other fabrics, the cell walls of some species of bacteria are more or less resistant to staining and bleaching than the cell walls of other species of bacteria. The way an unknown strain of bacteria responds to a staining technique can help to identify it. “The most common staining technique used to identify acid-fast bacteria is the Ziehl-Neelsen stain, in which the acid fast bacilli are stained bright red ..." with carbol fuchsin stain, then bleached with hydrochloric acid and ethanol, then counter stained with methylene blue. “... bacteria with an acid-fast cell wall resist decolorization with an acid-alcohol mixture during the acid-fast staining procedure, retain the initial dye carbol fuchsin and appear red. Common acid-fast bacteria of medical importance include Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Mycobacterium leprae, Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare complex, and Nocardia species”. So, by doing an “acid fast” test on an unknown strain of bacteria (and getting a positive result), you would know that the infection was probably caused by tuberculosis, or a Nocardia species. (Other tests would narrow it down more precisely). You could then look up which antibiotics are known to be most effective against tuberculosis.

Answer 4

mycobacteria are acid-fast and bacillus shaped:
like mycobacterium lepra which maybe transmitted by humans or wild armadillos
and also the famous mycobacterium tuberculosis which is found ofcourse in the air surrounding an infected person.